Love letters that chronicle the love affair of then Senator JFK and Swedish beauty Gunilla Von Post go on sale at auction today starting at $25,000. Kennedy and Von Post met on the French Riviera when he was a senator engaged to be married to Jackie and she was 21. The 2 danced the night away.
Both returned to their normal lives but kept up a steamy correspondence. JFK planned a cruise that involved Ms. Von Post but injured his back and was out of commission for several months. Not surprisingly, the affair lasted after Kennedy was married to Jackie. According to the New York Daily News:
The pair met on the French Riviera in the summer of 1953. At the time, he was 36, 15 years her senior. In a letter from June 28, 1954, just after he was married, Kennedy wrote to von Post “I might get a boat and sail around the Mediterranean for two weeks – with you as crew.”
Those plans went south when Kennedy injured his back. Kennedy wrote to von Post when he was recuperating in Manhattan.
“I am still in the hospital after two months. I was terribly disappointed that at the last moment I was not able to come to Europe, especially when you were going to be in Paris and we could have had such a good time … ”
He wrote that he was going to see her without fail if she wasn’t “all settled down” by then.
In the same letter, he writes at the end: “Is there any chance you will be coming to the U.S.?”
The now 78-year-old Post first revealed the affair in a 1997 book. She also gave an interview to ABC News’ 20/20 that year, describing how her heart went “boom boom boom boom” when she was with Kennedy.
“I was very happy to hear from him, but I said ‘he’s a married man,'” she told “20/20.”
The very next year, however, the two got together again in an old castle in Sweden.
“I borrowed him for a week, a beautiful week that no one can take away from me,” she told “20/20.”
Kennedy’s final letter to von Post is dated August, 1955. In it, he waxes wistful about the affair.
“I just got word today – that my wife and sister are coming here. It will all be complicated the way I feel now – my Swedish Flicka. All I have done is sit in the sun and look and the Ocean and think of Gunilla … All Love, Jack.”
The letters are expected to bring in more than $100,000. Meanwhile, it is hard to keep with with the picadillos of JFK. Was the press ignorant of his infidelities and womanizing or did they know and just keep quiet? What would motivate the press to keep quiet about something like this and the many, many other instances of our former president being a horn dog?
I am not sure I will ever understand this powerful family. At a time when people’s moral behavior was much more carefully scrutinized than it is today, a senator, soon to be president has affair after affair. Today, in an almost anything goes society, one little affair such as this one can ruin one’s political career. The irony does not escape me. I don’t think Kennedy could ever be elected today because he appeared to have been a sexual predator. He would be going to sexual addiction rehab right along with a certain famous golfer.
